


It sure would be better with you

by kasiopeia



Series: Soothe some heart and banish pain [2]
Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Introspection, William is a pining fool in love, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiopeia/pseuds/kasiopeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks about all the things he wanted to say, all the things he needed to say. But after watching all her videos, the only thing left is this: He didn't really know her at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It sure would be better with you

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to my story 'A gentle word like summer rain', but can be read alone.

William loves words. 

He has never been good at using them, or making himself understood by words alone, but he loves the way words move and change and rolls of other people's tongues. So he reads, watches and listens to words, and hopes that one day he will make them his own.

(It is one of the reasons he fell in love with Lizzie. She uses words as a weapon, they are a part of her just as much as he wants them to be a part of him).

 

 

 

He sits in his car outside Collins and Collins for a long time. He is not ready to go inside and tell Lizzie, but he knows it is time. _Just take a risk for once, it's better to loose than to not play at all_. George's voice says in the back of his mind. And Will knows he is right, in that perverted, strange way of his. It is what he envied George for when they were growing up, his ease in every situation and the gift he had for throwing himself into everything; full speed ahead. He supposes that for George the only thing better than playing and winning, is playing and loosing. At least that way he got to play. Will doesn't think like that, he plans everything out in his mind; the only way he will play is if he knows he will win. 

(He thinks that is what he loves most about Lizzie: that she doesn't do what he expects of her. She has never fitted into his plans.)

 

 

 

He tells her, and his heart is definitely not broken, because he knows that hearts can't break; it's physically impossible. So that's that.

 

 

He realizes (later, much later) that sometimes it is not the words he admire that say the most, it's the silences he leaves and the words he doesn't say. It has taken him far to long to get to this point, and he wishes he had seen it before. He has always assumed that he was being understood in his silences, but now he sees the multitude of different interpretations that are possible, and it hurts to know. (but even when he wishes he didn't know he knows he will be better for knowing, that this is good). 

He thinks about all the things he wanted to say, all the things he needed to say. But after watching all her videos, the only thing left is this: He didn't really know her at all. 

 

 

 

 

 

(He might be a true masochist, because he watches the video's again. And he keeps watching.)

 

Watching her, he envies Lizzie. The way she has with expressing herself, how she doesn't seem afraid of anything. But most of all he envies her relationship with Charlotte and her sisters, that closeness of shared experiences and memories. He loves Gigi dearly, but they never had the same bond. Their childhood might have been shared, but their memories are not the same. It doesn't pain him anymore that Gigi was the favored child, the one that could do no wrong, when all Will heard was what he could do better. He knows now that he can love his parents, miss them with all his heart and still not like all the things he remembers about them. And although he is close with Gigi now; brought together by tragedy and a will to be each others everything, he still watches the Bennet sisters and thinks that he would have liked something like that; a closeness that is not learned, but a part off who you are.

 

 

 

 

William moves through his life like everything is back to normal; boardrooms, offices, restaurants, cars and home. Rinse and repeat. But all the while he keeps Lizzie in the back of his mind, he tries to forget her, but when that doesn't work he keeps her with him and lets himself ask the ever important question: What would Lizzie do?

And it works, he finds himself getting better at things he had long since accepted not being good at. It is only when he is alone that he lets the mask fall, allows himself to think of not her opinions of him, but her smiles, her easy humor, her sharp brilliance and the way her words have a way of leaving him breathless.

Gigi knows of course. He can feel her worried gaze at him and while his first instinct is to smile and get better at hiding his loss, he thinks of the Bennet sisters and about how much Gigi truly has grown up over the last year. And one night when she sits down next to him on the couch and looks at him with her big eyes that remind him so devastatingly much of their mother's, he drops his head to rest on the back of the couch and rolls his head and looks back. And he tells her everything, it's painstaking, and halting, and he doesn't think that he does the story justice. But before he is done they have both cried a bit, an empty wine bottle is on the table and they are sitting much closer to each other than when he started. And that is something. He still hasn't told her everything, knows that there is some new learned truths about himself that he is not ready to share even with her. But he has already showed her the first video, knows she will watch them all, and maybe she will form her own opinion of the William that shows up in them. 

They sit up a while after that, the conversation flowing freely, helped in some way by the honesty before and the wine still in their glasses. And for once Will feels the words come easily, he knows that he is talking to someone who will love him even if her gets them wrong, and that gives him the freedom to get them right. She asks him, right before she falls asleep on his shoulder if he still loves Lizzie. 

"Yes." he says, and that yes holds all the things he has thought of her ever since this summer, but it also holds the certain knowledge that he could easily love her even more; if Lizzie will ever let him know the real human behind the image he has of her he knows he would be lost forever.

He falls asleep not long after, but as he watches his little sister with heavy eyelids (she is asleep now with her head cradled on his chest like when they were younger), he feels lighter that he has been in well, years, if he is being honest with himself, and it soars through him how much he loves his sister. 

She is his family, and no matter what else, he will always have that.

 

 

 

 

 

She comes to Pemberly, because of course she does. He has just gotten used to the idea that he would never see her again when it was not through a screen. But when he walks (gets pushed, tricked or shoved might all be better words) into that office and sees her again, it's like all air leaves him and even though he knows it shouldn't be possible, he loves her more than ever. 

 

 

 

Sometimes he thinks that his life has always revolved around Lizzie Bennet. He knows it is not true, of course. But it unquestionably feels like it in the places that impossible things are true (a redhead sitting on a bench in the park where he walks to work, sun glittering on the lake behind her, a smile on her face as she reads a book he knows he could love).

 

 

 

 

 

He is watching Gigi in the Domino videos, and all he wants to do is to kill George; wants to hit him and hurt him in a way he never thought he had in him. Will has never been a violent man, but he knows that for Gigi he would do almost anything. It is just the knowledge that she doesn't want it from him, and that he wouldn't like the man he would be after, that stops him from hunting down and smacking the selfish grin with the easy charm and the _peaches_ , off of George's face. 

(another thing holding him back is the ever present question of what Lizzie would say, but somehow he rather thinks she would like the dramatic gesture of it. At least at the moment).

 

 

 

In the end he goes to her again; the woman who asks questions without always waiting for the answer. This time she answers his question before it is asked.

She doesn't use her words, but for once William is happier without them.


End file.
